Heart-breaking new image of glam trainer after ex ‘broke neck’ when she dumped him

The family of a woman who was left paralysed after her abusive ex-boyfriend turned into the ‘Incredible Hulk’ and snapped her neck have released an image of her fighting for her life in hospital.

Trudi Burgess, 57, had to have nine hours of surgery to pin her spine after evil Robert Easom, 56, flew into a rage and broke her neck when she threatened to leave him after eight years of abuse.

Giving evidence at his trial at Preston Crown Court, former teacher Ms Burgess sobbed as she described how Easom turned into the ‘Incredible Hulk’ during a horrific campaign of abuse from 2017 to 2025. A jury took just 27 minutes to find him guilty of grievous bodily harm with intent.

In the newly released harrowing image, Ms Burgess is seen hooked up to wires, tubes and machines.

She spent three months in intensive care and doctors at The Royal Preston Hospital were worried she may never breathe unaided.

However, she has made remarkable progress and is preparing to leave the spinal injuries unit in the next few months, but will continue to need round-the-clock care and will never be able to walk again.

Ms Burgess’s family have started a GoFundMe page to pay for her care – which has raised £22,000 in 24 hours.

Her son, Jackson, said: “Our goal is to make sure the rest of her life is as safe, dignified, and stable as possible. When she leaves hospital, she will need a fully accessible home, specialist equipment, a powered wheelchair, a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, ongoing physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and 24-hour care for the rest of her life.

“She’ll need help with every part of daily living – getting out of bed, washing, dressing, eating, and moving safely. We’re hugely grateful that we still have our mum. We just want to make the rest of her life as comfortable, safe, and connected as possible.”

During evidence about the attack – which happened in February this year after she told Easom she was leaving him, Ms Burgess sobbed in video evidence played to the jury and said: “He got hold of my head, and pushed it with both his hands down, it felt like it just folded in(to) my chest.

“I’ve never felt anything like it, I felt my neck break, and I started to feel that I was going numb. I think I screamed, but …I had no voice, he just kept folding my head in and in and in. I kept thinking, ‘He’s gonna stop now,’ and, ‘I’m gonna die.’

“He kept doing it, and all the while he was going, ‘Shut the f*** up, f***ing shut up, I’ll shut you up, stop talking, stop talking. I was trying to say, ‘You’re killing me,’ (but) I couldn’t speak. I thought I was about to die.”

Afterwards Ms Burgess told Easom: “Oh my God, I can’t feel anything in my body, you’ve ruined both our lives.”

Explaining her injuries, Ms Burgess said she ‘feels nothing from the chest down’.

She said. “I have neuropathic pain which makes me feel like I cannot breathe.”

She described her legs as being ‘like a cold cement slab’ pulling her down and her body feeling like it is being constrained by a suit of armour ‘two sizes too small’.

She added: “I can feel my neck, and my arms are paralysed in part, but I can move them, and I’ve been working hard at that. My hands, unfortunately, are pretty much numb, and I don’t have finger flexion, so I can’t pick anything up, or move them, or hold anything, or do anything with them.”

The court heard Easom didn’t believe she was hurt, but after she begged him to call an ambulance he eventually dialled 999, telling the operator: “She’s fallen out of bed and just landed in a bad way really.”

He also lied to police saying the couple had been involved in a ‘playfight that went wrong’.

Easom, from Chorley, Lancs., had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and controlling and coercive behaviour.

He is facing life in jail when he is sentenced in February.

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